When most of your diet suddenly becomes taboo, like when you learn you can no longer eat wheat, it’s natural to feel deprived and crave foods to placate the loss.

TV commercials and billboards bank on your feeling feel this way, and in fact create the problem they claim to be the answer to. Food companies thrive on crafting need and desire, and the antidote, of course, is consuming their products. 

Marketing gluten-free food is a slightly different game, since the deprivation problem already exists for those of us who can’t eat gluten. But many gluten-free food manufacturers still attempt to remedy our pain through the most enticing and potent fare possible: devil chocolate cake, shortbread cookies, pasta, breaded chicken nuggets… It’s hard to say no when you feel life is unfair for not letting you eat anything you want.

Especially when the message is everywhere you turn for support. Thumbing through a “health” focused magazine, you’d think treats were the staple gluten-free diet foods. Like the old USDA food pyramid: 8-11 servings of bread and pasta, sugar at the top, and a pile of food allergens in between. You certainly won’t get healthy or thin or improve your quality of life on this stuff.

Loaded with sugar, chemicals, starches, and bleached, refined “safe” grains, gluten free treats-manufacturing companies don’t have your health in mind. In my humble opinion, these highly addictive, void-of-nutrition non-foods trade one kind of poison for another.

But when has health-promoting ever been sexy or exciting? We must learn to see through the smokescreen of gluten-free advertising.